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I’m a board member of our Neighborhood Council. Volunteer, natch, but we are given a budget by the City to do things for our area, we have to take really dull webinars like a city worker with a paycheck and benefits and supposedly we have the ear of City Hall.

Long story short, some guys with gusto came to our council to get funding for surveillance cameras in a local park. It is a mixed area. Lots of families, normal, good park activities and couple of gang shootings a year. The police always tell us, “It’s so much better than it was”. Which it is. Here I am recently in said park on National Night Out. I was getting people to sign up to get emails about our council. If they did I gave them a t-shirt, a flashlight or a reusable grocery bag. Some of them thought they could just get the t-shirt without hearing from me about their neighborhood council.

They were wrong.

So, I felt that our council member, Herb Wesson should have listened to these local heroes when they emailed his field deputy about this issue. Crickets. We only get so much dough a year so I don’t want to fund all things that cross our desk, and didn’t we give the council man some scratch for movies in the park? I’m also still waiting for my stop signs.. another story. Cut to: we fund half and I say I will help them contact the council office for the other half.

Then 3 weeks of my life was spent lobbying, email, phone calls. My favorite was the one from the field deputy Vincent , “Thanks Debra, do you have a number I can reach you.” Yeah, my name is not Debra, but here is my number. He never called. Some headway with his boss, high up deputy, not enough. Went the Mayor route, which looked promising, but our council meeting was now coming up and I felt the momentum would be to fund or dump the project. Frankly, it was less than 6 grand and there was a thick petition to go with the request.

A friend of a friend is in this HILarious video that takes place in a city council meeting. It bears some resemblance to the dynamic of these groups. Good satire

The night of the meeting Wesson’s rep Sylvia Lacey was there. Now, if you have ever been involved in a board meeting or city gov’t NOTHING runs zip, zip along, so it’s hard to break this down and give you, the reader info, and not want to stick a fork in your head at the pace of things. Bottom line, the council voted to be contingency funding for the cameras if the council office couldn’t “find the money”. I was also able to bring to Syliva’s attention that our community was feeling like they weren’t being heard… or called back. She wrote down our laundry list of issues, from problems with their website to badly placed traffic lights.

This has a happy ending. Two days later the council office funded it. I was so relieved as I didn’t have the time to start the recall my council member campaign ( must cancel that T-shirt order). I have other unpaid projects to work on.

As I always say when someone asks if I would be interested interviewing someone, “will they come to my house?” I don’t offer that if the subject doesn’t interest me, but when I saw the title of this book “The Funny Woman Guide to Get Organized Now” by Isabella McBride I gave her my address. I’m funny, I always need to be more organized.

Let’s meet this lass. Starting Thursday her E-book will be available for FREE. So, jump on it. To get the book click HERE

A few months back the lovely Shannon Colleary included my Muffinlicious video in a post she wrote about body image. The post was picked up by Huffington Post and my Muffin top was seen by more more people than any of my body parts to this point in time. Including parts exposed while drunk in my ’20’s.

I reached out to Miss Shannon and happily did lunch with her. She is my food group. We talked about doing a video together. She is a sport. She showed up at my house and when I sprang the idea I had on her she committed like a Broadway thespian. I had the premise, the improv lines are all her.

So, what if there was a product that made your life much easier. This is what it might look like.

It’s the most humbling thing in life … as we get older things that we have heard others discuss become our reality. Youngins, lower the ‘tude because no matter what you think or what you do some things are going to hit you.

A Cool Mom special! I discovered a cool toy and so can you. Leave a comment here and you will have a chance to win the Box-O-Mania play box. Watch the video to hear more about it. It’s a great portable playhouse.

As we face down the barrel of Oscar time I think, ‘Hey, I can be as self-involved, self-promoting and self-congratulatory as anyone else in show biz, the Hollywood Foreign waiters (what my dad called the Golden Globe group) or the Tea Party’. It’s time for the CMAs!!! Oh, wait, that’s what the Country Music Awards go by … hmm, I know! Time to hand out the “Coolie” (sidebar: I worked with Coolio once on a VH-1 show in NYC and loved the guy. I’m from Culver City; he lived in Westchester, which is next door. We bonded over unchic addresses.)

But, will the Coolie go to me? Sure, the team that put that video together will know they were a big part of making something award winning — I’m talking to you Rex and Vivien — but, oh, no, the real winner is the randomly selected commenter. Because if you make a comment, that is my reward.

When I shot this video I didn’t know what my “trophy” would be for the lucky winner (a viewer, not the winning video). But now I know! The lovely moms behind PackIt (my first ever national commercial) have offered up one of their PackIts. (True: love the PackIt. Just packed a smoothie in one this AM for Vivien’s lunch snack.)

So, watch this video, and please “vote” below. Who knows? Maybe one day the Coolies will have a dinner, red carpet and sweaty under breasts – all the hallmarks of a REAL award show.

IF you need to jog your memory here is a link to nominee #1, #2, #3, #4, #5

Since web traffic is a trickle the last two weeks of the year, I’ve been largely offline. But, back to the chain gang. Otherwise known as having to get my daughter to school on time. And dressed. With a lunch. With a book bag. Sigh.

As people muse about resolutions for this fab New Year I have one to add to the usual, don’t stuff myself with baked goods, workout everyday, read a book with more substance than People Magazine… I have one more aspiration of late: Raise My kids to be Chinese.

Hear me out. Granted it’s not just the old immigrants work harder deal. Did you watch the Summer Olympics opening ceremony? They made it very clear they are taking over the world. So literally it’s good to bone up on your Mandarian. But, metaphorically there are some other lessons to be gleaned here. Look at this. That’s right, I’m not the only one who thought about this. Persistence and discipline can trump IQ.

Just without that pesky Communism.

(Note: Cameo by wonderful cameraman and good sport Chun Ming Huang. Though why he doesn’t have clips of the Cool Mom’s he has shot. I don’t know. )